The goals for this lesson are:

1. To write a rough draft for your business

2. Save your business plan to a business folder on your USB drive.

Writing Your Business Plan

Here are the questions you need to answer for your new business.

Q1. What field are you interested in and why are you interested in it?

Q2. What is your business idea?

Q3. What is your business name?

Q4. How will your business meet an unfulfilled need?

Q5. What products or services will your business provide?

Q6. How is your business different from other similar existing businesses?

Q7. Marketing... How will you let others know your business exists?

Q8. How much will it cost to start your business & where will you get the money?

Q9. How much will you have to sell your products/services for to make a profit?

We will spend Class Session 4 working together to help you develop more detailed answers to each of the above questions.

The goals for this lesson are:

1. Find a domain name for your business

2. Begin to organize your business plan

In this lesson, we will review how to write your business plan including choosing a business field, researching existing businesses in that field, choosing your business name and then writing your actual business plan.

Choose a Business Field
In choosing a business field, it is wise to consider the Law of Supply and Demand we discussed in the last session. The best way to insure a successful business is to pick a field with a big demand – in other words a lot of customers – but a limited supply. Put another way, choose a problem, product or service that is not currently being addressed by many other businesses and then develop a plan to meet that need.

Another important factor in creating a successful business is to choose a field that you are personally interested in and a field that you have already spent a lot of time researching. Starting your own successful business will require a lot of hours of your time. To follow it through, you will need to have a personal interest in the field you are entering.

Finally write down more than one idea for a business to give you other options if your first idea falls through or your business plan reveals that there is no way for your first idea to make a profit. Write down how will your business will meet an unfulfilled need and what products or services your business will provide.

Review-
What business(es) are you interested in?

What is the difference between an urgent need and a want?

The goals for today’s lesson are:

1. Understanding a business budget

2. Identifying different kinds of businesses: Product, Service, Information

A Business Budget

Businesses are an important part of an economy because businesses create jobs that generate income for families and for the government. (The government gets money when we pay taxes.)

Nearly all new jobs come from local businesses. When people buy fruit from a nearby farm, they are supporting a local business.

You may think that someday you will go to work for some major corporation- like Boeing, Microsoft or Starbucks– because you see ads for these corporations on TV all the time. However, you are actually more likely to get a job with a small local business or to even create your own job... by creating your own business. One of the first things you have to think about when you start a business is the budget.

Businesses need a budget in order to make sure that their income each month is higher than their expenses. Business income is typically in the form of sales – with customers buying products or services from the business owner. Some business expenses are similar to expenses faced by families like rent and insurance. But businesses have other expenses that families do not have: the Cost of Goods, the Cost of Employees and the Cost of Marketing. We are going to look at each of these costs by looking at a lemonade stand business.

The goals for this lesson are:

1. Learning what an economy is

2. Learning how to think about a budget

3. Learning about the importance of competition and cooperation

What is an Economy?
Our economy is an active system or social network in which people earn money and spend money. In an economy money changes hands between people and groups of people again and again and again. For example, I earn money teaching you. Then I buy food. The grocery store gets my money, and then it pays its workers. After the grocery store pays its workers, the workers can pay for haircuts or put gas in their cars. Then the hair cutters and gas station workers get money which they spend on food and a place to live. The people who own these businesses also get money which they spend on food and a place to live. This cycle goes on and on- people earning money and spending money. We have a local economy (near where you live), a state economy, a national economy and even a world economy.

The government has a role in the economy. It collects tax dollars, which it spends on schools, roads, social security and public defense … among other things. This picture shows you how an economy works. There are 4 basic parts of an economic network. Read how the 4 parts relate to each other.

Whether an economy gets better or worse depends on the actions and decisions of families, workers, businesses and the government.

When the economy is good, there are plenty of jobs. When there are more jobs than people, wages go up. When wages go up, it is easier for families to pay their bills and they have more money to spend... or to save. When businesses sell more things, they make more money, and they can hire even more workers. This is a description of a growing economy, also known as a vibrant economy, or a strong economy. This is good for you and your family.